I'm glad you brought up adventure games. Adventure Games and RPG's both have similarities, while the main difference in that one the character you play is static and the other you can shape your character. Exploring is a huge part of RPG's, not the only part, but a huge part.

I'm afraid that at some point RPG's will go the way of Adventure games and that will be a sad day.

A lot of people tend to forget that TES is a Sandbox/Rpg, exploring is a Sandbox/adventure quality, not an rpg quality, it can enhance an rpg, but it doesn't make an rpg.

This, I don't want the next game to feel completely the same as either, I just want it to be it's own game.

I think that FNV was kind of heading back into the Morrowind way of playing, namely with factions that you can join that actually change the way the game plays out and etc. Oblivion didn't really have this and in my mind this was Oblivion's greatest flaw (although I'm also the first to admit that Oblivion is my favorite PC game of all time...I've played through it all at least 4 times and partially another half dozen times more).

My hope is that Skyrim takes the best of both Oblivion and Morrowind and makes one epic TES game!

I guess I'm one of the few that rather have more 'realistic' landscapes. At least in lands where the races are influenced by real life races I rather have the world be more 'normal' I guess. I don't want giant mushrooms or other crazy vegetation just for the sake of having it look more 'alien'. in skyrim I want my cold weather and snowy terrain and icy lakes. Save the more alien looking features for elven homelands.

I think if oblivion only added more dungeons with unique items, opposed to the usual leveled stuff, it would have not even been comparible to morrowind. After playing both games numerous times I realized that what made morrowind so great was the vast array of unique items that can be found only by exploring some of the most well hidden caves/dungeons, etc. Getting that daedric dai katana at any level you can stand up to the enemies inside a certain mine was a great feature. If that way of gameplay was present in oblivion the two games wouldn't be comparable anymore

To an extent, I agree although I would like a diverse landscape to explore. I don't mind giant mushrooms as long as that's not all that I have to see. Personally, I like forests best but even that gets old when that's all you have to look at. I hope that Skyrim is more than just a snowy wasteland or I predict the landscape will be boring and we'll all find ourselves wishing we were in the Summerset Isles instead.

I agree with this. Skyrim should look fairly realistic. It's a rugged barbarian land, not a magical land of elves. I think the problem with Oblivion, and the reason people pine for the landscape of Mororwind, is that Cyrodiil all looked rather featureless and dull. The problem isn't that it was realistic, it's that it was uninteresting. If you're on PC and have ever tried out the Unique Landscapes mods, you can see just how wonderful the province of Cyrodiil can be with a bit more attention paid to detail.



This, this, a thousand times this. I really hope Skyrim will reward exploration the way Morrowind did. The only reward for exploring dungeons in Oblivion is randomized, leveled loot, and that's not very exciting. I have reasonable hope that Bethesda will rectify this in Skyrim, as Fallout 3's dungeons contained more rewards for exploration.

I like realistic landscapes as long as they are realistic. Oblivion's environments were absolutely terrible. They had realistic elements, but the design was just awful. Like I mentioned in the 'Forests' thread, Oblivion's forests were more like orchards than forests. All the trees were thinly spaced out, were identical to each other, the terrain was completely flat, and there was no variety in vegetation. I enjoy fantasy environments a lot as well. It's more about the design of the land, than the style.

well I did not "hate" oblivion, I still have all the CDs

BUT I liked morrowind better in some ways (not combat that's for sure)

so I would like Skyrim to fall in a barrel of toxic waste and morph into a morrowind/oblivion/warcraft/diablo/dragon age mutant .

On the subject of wishing Skyrim would be more like older TES games, if there's is one thing I would like to see re-emerge from the Daggerfall days, it would be cities and tows that actually feel like cities and towns. The villages in Oblivion consisted of three houses with as many NPCs. The "cities" were the size of a small village in Daggerfall. Give me cities that feel like cities... urban sprawls teeming with people. Maybe this new engine would actually be able to pull something like that off.

Odd question and pretty much rhetorical.